They have a website for the public to report abuses on which they make clear (in bold red letters):

NOTE: We do not share the information that you provide with the person you are reporting.

or apparently with anyone else since nothing seems to have been reported in the year it has been up.

Union County Acts for Illegal Immigrants

For 99.99% of Union County residents were they to express their primary desire to the Union County freeholders it would be for lower taxes. However, within the pay-to-play system the county maintains that is an impossibility. Anything else they can do for you? As it turns out one group did have a request that the freeholders honored.

For years, Union County, like others across the state, would hold those who had served jail time or were able to meet bail requirements for up to 48 hours after they should have been released, officials said. They were detained solely on request of the Immigration Customs and Enforcement agency, which wanted time to pick up and further detain them.

So one man looked for action:

Last May, [Carlos] Rojas, now 25, reached back to his class instructor as part of his work to aid immigrants. He approached Mohamed Jalloh in an effort to get Union County to change its policy of detaining people — who have already served a criminal sentence or who can make bail — solely because of their immigrant status on a request from federal authorities.

Jalloh, who also is a Union County freeholder, listened to Rojas. As a result, the county this month made the policy change.

Two questions:

Occasionally I tune out at freeholder meetings so this might have gotten past me but even after reviewing agendas for the summer I saw nobody officially bringing this to the freeholders’ attention or any resolution passed on the matter (and certainly no discussion). How exactly did the county make this policy change without memorializing it?

How is it that the county comes off agreeing with a spokesman for illegal immigrants over the Immigration Customs and Enforcement agency? Has pandering for votes taken precedence even over measures that could reduce the chances of another 9/11?

And one observation:

Illegal immigrants now have a primer on how Union County government works. Don’t be like those chumps who come out publicly for what they want. Latch on to a freeholder and, if it’s worth their while, they’ll make it happen for you.

And my epiphany that sports were kind of bullshit (unless you were gambling on them, I would later learn) happened after high school, when I was in Santa Rosa, California, where lots more people had mushrooms. The more I took those things, the less I understood running into another person on purpose. The reason I made myself a junior in the story was because that’s the age I wanted to reach back to and say, “You can fuck all that sports shit and get into the Dead, you now. Or do any other fucking thing you want. You’re gonna die in your own arms, anyway.” (page 74)

I was damn near the mascot of the team; nobody wanted me in the game, but everybody wanted me at the party. (page 76)

Hondo [Crouch, owner of Lukenbach, Texas] was into “unlearning” the things the machine teaches you. The machine says there’s no such word as “plike?” Bullhit. I just used it four times. In a book. (page 80 plike: to play like)

Keith Sykes is a problem solver by nature, and I’m a problem by nature. (page 98)

He said, “I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, and not screaming and whining like everybody else in the car.” (page 130)

He’s one of those rare people whose capacity to help is equaled by his willingness to help. He’s concerned about other people, and he demonstrates that concern in ways that make those peop0le’s lives easier. (page 145 on Garth Brooks)

I’ve been doing a lot of listening lately too, and I try to be like Kris [Kristofferson] in getting past the jealousy that Justin Townes Erle or Jason Isbell or Hayes Carll or Elizabeth Cook or Amanda Shires has written something great that I didn’t feel first, and to just enjoy that there’s something new and wonderful in the world. (page 207)

Sleep becomes something you do in hour-long intervals, and much of the time it closely resembles what the layman might call “passing out.” (page 229)

Other than that, and some other awful shit I’ve done, I’m a pretty good guy. (page 235 on the way he broke up with Jimmy Buffett’s niece)

As may be apparent from some of the previous chapters, I don’t often get asked to talk to young people. (page 239)

According to census figures total employment in Union County is at 202,372. According to New Jersey pension records 20,878 of those jobs are in government. Theoretically then 10% of the members of the Union County Democratic Committee should also be working in government to be representative of the general population. It’s not even close. When […]